The HST Frontier Fields: Complete Observations and High-Level Science Data Products for All 6 Clusters
Abstract
The Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields program is a large Director's Discretionary program of 840 orbits, to obtain ultra-deep observations of six strong lensing clusters of galaxies, together with parallel deep blank fields, making use of the strong lensing amplification by these clusters of distant background galaxies to detect the faintest galaxies currently observable in the high-redshift universe. The entire program has now completed successfully for all 6 clusters, namely Abell 2744, Abell S1063, Abell 370, MACS J0416.1-2403, MACS J0717.5+3745 and MACS J1149.5+2223,. Each of these was observed over two epochs, to a total depth of 140 orbits on the main cluster and an associated parallel field, obtaining images in ACS (F435W, F606W, F814W) and WFC3/IR (F105W, F125W, F140W, F160W) on both the main cluster and the parallel field in all cases. Full sets of high-level science products have been generated for all these clusters by the team at STScI, including cumulative-depth data releases during each epoch, as well as full-depth releases after the completion of each epoch. These products include all the full-depth distortion-corrected drizzled mosaics and associated products for each cluster, which are science-ready to facilitate the construction of lensing models as well as enabling a wide range of other science projects. Many improvements beyond default calibration for ACS and WFC3/IR are implemented in these data products, including corrections for persistence, time-variable sky, and low-level dark current residuals, as well as improvements in astrometric alignment to achieve milliarcsecond-level accuracy. The full set of resulting high-level science products and mosaics are publicly delivered to the community via the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) to enable the widest scientific use of these data, as well as ensuring a public legacy dataset of the highest possible quality that is of lasting value to the entire community.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #230
- Pub Date:
- June 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AAS...23031613K